by Jon McGoran
As I pulled the pill bottle out, however, I heard a groaning sound of twisting metal. The tank shifted slightly away from me. I held my breath as it seemed to settle into place for a moment. Then it pitched over, falling slowly away from me. It landed with a loud whoomp and reverberated with a bell-like hum.
The guys in the hazmat suits stopped and looked over at me, looking like a pack of prairie dogs. For a moment we just stared at each other. I snuck a peek at Rupp’s remains, and immediately wished I hadn’t. One of the prairie dogs pointed at me and took a step; then they all did, coming toward me in a slow wave of muffled shouts and awkward shuffles.
72
I angled away from most of the dark suits, but the ones nearby noticed something was up. They seemed conflicted at first; their natural instinct to chase whoever was being chased was mitigated by the fact that I was wearing a suit like theirs and the guys chasing me weren’t. Eventually, one of the dark suits said, “Hey, hold on there. Stop!” Then the rest joined in the chase. They quickly out-paced the hazmat guys, but by then I had a decent lead.
When I got to the fence, I didn’t slow down; springing as high as I could, I grabbed the links with my fingers and toes. When I reached the top, I had enough momentum to swing myself over. I think I beat Moose’s time. When I came down on the outside, I could see a loose pack of six or eight feds in dark suits, close behind me, yelling “Stop,” “Halt,” or, most ominously, “Freeze!”
As I turned and sprinted off, I wondered what they thought was going on, and what I had to do with it. More to the point, I wondered if they’d feel justified shooting me in the back.
At the edge of the field, I jumped feet first, sliding down the eight-foot incline and onto the road. I did not look both ways before I crossed, but halfway across, I did look one way, when the sound of screeching brakes caught my attention.
I stopped and jumped back, and for a moment, Pruitt and I stared at each other. Then I heard the rustle of dark suits approaching behind me, and I continued up the embankment on the other side of the road. I looked back to see Pruitt, half out of his car, looking on as a half-dozen federal agents crossed the road in front of him like a small herd of dark-suited antelope. Then I cut left, lowered my head, and concentrated on running.
My lungs were burning pretty good by the time I saw the truck, still there, the engine still running. I vaulted in, put it in gear, and sped down the driveway. Then I turned onto the road, only to see Pruitt’s car coming up fast behind me with its lights flashing. I put down the pedal, trying to get as much as I could out of Frank’s truck. There were rules for police regarding high-speed chases, but I knew that when it came down to it, Pruitt was about as concerned with rules as I was.
I got it up to eighty, which was practically suicide on those roads—not just because of the blind turns and the hidden driveways but also the gut-wrenching lurches over each rolling hill. Still, Pruitt stayed on me, and I wondered if he was going to start shooting. When I pushed the needle up to ninety, he almost missed a curve, spinning out on the side of the road in a cloud of dust. I put some distance between us after that, and he fell behind even more, apparently reluctant to try those speeds again.
Finally, the hospital appeared on my right. I swerved into the entrance and parked right in front. A valet came up to me, then stepped back. Whatever respectability the suit might have lent me was now long gone; it was crumpled and sweaty, covered with grass and dirt. He put up both hands, letting me know he wouldn’t be giving me any trouble.
If the truck was still there when all this was over, I’d make sure he got a nice tip.
The lobby was as crowded as the Emergency Room had been, but instead of the pale sweat of infection, these faces were stricken with fear and concern, in some cases despair. As I pushed through the murmuring crowd, trying not to make eye contact, I heard words like “plague” and “epidemic” and “quarantine.”
I wondered if I was too late.
Nola’s room was 308, on the third floor, but as tired as I was, I didn’t want to risk the elevator. I took the steps two at a time and didn’t slow down until I got there.
Then I stopped. The room was empty.
73
Standing in the doorway to the empty room, my thoughts were a jumbled mess, like they’d been smashed and shattered and swept into a single pile. At the sound of footsteps rushing behind me, I expected to be slammed against the wall and cuffed, read my rights if I was lucky. Instead it was a soft touch, and I turned to see Janie.
She read my face and shook her head. “No, she’s still alive. They moved her to the ICU. But … nothing is working. We can’t seem to help her.”
“I need to see her. Now.”
She shook her head. “She’s in quarantine. They all are.”
“Take me there.”
She stared at my face a moment longer. Then she said, “Come on.”
I followed her down the hallway, my hand resting lightly on her back, making sure she didn’t slow down. I kept an eye out, especially behind us, waiting at any moment for Pruitt or the feds to show up.
Through the glass doors of the isolation ward, I could see dozens of beds, patients covered with masks and tubes and wires. When I pushed the glass door, it didn’t move.
“You can’t go in there, but you can see her, third from the end on the left,” Janie said. “She’s in isolation. It’s locked down.”
“I need to get in there.”
“You can’t. We have to keep whatever it is isolated.”
“Isolated? Have you seen the emergency room?”
She bit her lip, but shook her head. “You can’t. Orders from the CDC.”
I took the pill bottle out of my pocket and shook it. “This is the cure. I just took it off the body of the guy who created it, the guy who created the disease that’s killing her. I need to go in there and give her one of these capsules before the infection spreads to her brain and she dies.”
I felt bad for Janie. It was a tough spot to be in. But I didn’t have time to wait for her to decide what to do.
When I tugged out my gun and pointed it at the glass door, she said, “Wait,” and stepped forward to swipe her card through the electronic lock.
Nola was dying. Her face was gray except for an angry red around her eyes and nose. I needed to wake her up, but I was scared to touch her. She looked like she would break.
I took her hand between mine and kissed her forehead. Her skin felt cold and damp. When I brushed her hair away from her face, she opened her eyes.
“Hey,” I said softly.
She looked at me, but she couldn’t speak.
I opened the pill bottle. There were about two dozen capsules inside it. I shook one into my hand. “I need you to take this.”
In the distance, I could hear raised voices.
Nola struggled to focus on the capsule. Then she looked back at me and gave her head a little shake.
“You’ve got to,” I said.
“Can’t,” she rasped.
The voices were getting closer now. I could hear yelling.
I tried to put the capsule in her mouth, but she shook her head again. “Can’t swallow.”
I could hear footsteps now, running.
I twisted open the capsule and emptied the contents into her mouth, leaving a smudge of white powder on her lips.
She moved her tongue around in her mouth. Her lips were cracked. I dribbled just the tiniest bit of water in there from a cup on the table beside her bed. I waited a second, then dribbled some more.
“Careful,” said Janie, behind me. “If that gets into her lungs…”
Nola coughed a little bit. She sounded like she wanted to cough more but didn’t have the strength.
I didn’t know how much of the Mycozene she was getting, but I knew she was in bad shape. I opened a second capsule and repeated the process. Then I sealed it with a kiss.
When I pulled back, Nola had tears in her eyes. “Scared,” she said.
; I gave her a smile with more confidence than I was feeling. “You’ll be okay now.”
I was holding her hand, and when I moved to go, she held it tight.
“Don’t go,” she whispered.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Almost as soon as I said it, Pruitt came through the door with his gun two-handed out in front of him, swinging it around this way and that, covering the whole room. His face was a bright, even red, like a bad sunburn.
“Get down, you piece of shit!” he roared at me. He must have been ten feet away from me, and I still felt moisture land on my cheek.
As I turned around and raised my hands, I heard Pruitt grunt. Then I felt his gun come down hard on the side of my head.
74
I went dizzy for a moment, and the side of my head felt hot and wet. Janie was screaming.
Pruitt stuck his gun in my face, mumbling something about a right to an attorney as he grabbed me by the shirt and swung me off the bed and into a wheelchair. My head cleared as a small cluster of sweaty men in dark suits showed up, each flashing ID from a different agency, each trying to claim me as theirs.
Pruitt ignored them as he wheeled me toward the elevators. We all crowded onto the first one going down.
In the elevator, I could hear phrases like “jurisdiction” and “national security” and “global pandemic,” but each time Pruitt would reply with, “murder.”
When the doors opened, Pruitt wheeled me out of the elevator and through the lobby, the entire gaggle of suits in tow. I had recovered enough that I could have put my foot down on the floor and brought the whole procession to a halt. But I figured resisting arrest in front of a lobby full of people would not help my already remote chances of professional rehabilitation. And going along for the ride probably wouldn’t hurt my case if I ever decided to sue the bastard for brutality. I closed my eyes and struggled not to smile at that thought.
I heard the automatic doors whoosh open, and I felt the bump of wheels going over the threshold. But once we were outside, Pruitt ground to a halt. The chatter of the suits stopped as well.
When I opened my eyes, I saw a team of eight tactical agents in black combat outfits with Homeland Security insignias and “DHS” emblazoned across the front. They were aiming their laser-sighted M4s so that each of the suits had a red laser dot over his chest. Pruitt had one on his chest and one on his forehead. I looked down and saw one on my chest, too.
In the middle of the group was Danny Tennison, looking very smug. Next to him was an older guy who looked like he was in charge. Danny leaned over to him, gestured at me, and said, “That’s him.”
The older guy stepped forward and held up his ID. “Special Agent Craig Sorenson, Homeland Security.” He looked down at me. “Doyle Carrick?”
I raised my hand, wondering if I was about to be disappeared. Once again, I regretted having brought up Danny’s marriage.
One of the agents next to Sorenson stepped in and gave me a quick pat down before taking my cell phone out of my jacket. He tapped it a few times, then showed the display to Sorenson. Sorenson nodded, and the other guy stepped back out of the way. He kept my phone.
Sorenson looked down at me sideways, assessing the blood on the side of my head. “Can you walk?”
“Yeah.”
He pointed to a large black van parked at the curb. “Then walk.”
75
As it turned out, it wasn’t just a van; it was a Mobile Intelligence Unit.
“Nice van,” I said when we got inside.
“It’s not a van,” Sorenson replied. “It’s a Mobile Intelligence Unit.”
It was bigger than my college dorm room, and even with Sorenson, a doctor, and two agents named Lionel and Durand, it was less crowded. In the middle was a table with benches on either side and a chair at one end. It even had a bathroom.
Sorenson sat at the chair and took a deep, loud breath. “So what the hell is going on here?”
“You know, it’s funny,” I replied. “I’ve been wondering that myself.”
Before we got started, I put the Mycozene pills on the table and told Sorenson what they were and where I got them.
He eyed them suspiciously. “This is what you gave the girl?”
I nodded. “I’m pretty sure whatever she has is the same thing that’s filling up this hospital. This is the cure.”
He gave the bottle a little shake, rattling around two dozen or so pills inside. “I don’t think that’s going to be enough.”
I could see why Stan Bowers didn’t like the guy. “I’m pretty sure the Dunston police have fifty kilos of the stuff in the evidence lock up. They thought it was heroin; then they thought it was flour. It’s a drug called Mycozene, distilled from genetically engineered corn.”
Sorenson gave Agent Lionel a nod that spun him on his heel and sent him from the van. Then Sorenson turned back to me and held up the pill bottle again. “And you’re sure this stuff will cure this disease you’re telling me about?”
“That’s what the evil genius told me.”
“You know, if it’s not, you could be looking at another murder charge.”
I laughed. “If it’s not, my legal troubles will be the least of our worries.”
* * *
For the next eight hours, we tried to piece it together.
I told Sorenson almost everything. When I finished, I asked him to check on Nola for me. He ignored that and asked me to tell the story again. When I finished the second time, he left for ten minutes. When he came back, he brought me a soda. Then he asked me to tell the entire story again.
I thanked him for the soda; then I told him I wasn’t answering any more questions without an update on Nola’s condition.
He looked at me like he was trying to decide which would be easier, breaking out the enhanced interrogation techniques or calling the hospital. He turned his back and mumbled into his phone. A moment later, he turned back to face me and said, “Critical but stable.”
“Thanks,” I said, sipping the soda. “I also need you to check on a kid named Carl Squires. Accidental death, drug overdose a couple of days ago. Pruitt found him under the Stony Creek Bridge. Looked like he got high and fell off the bridge. I think it might have been murder, and it might have been Levkov and company.”
Sorenson raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t say anything.
“I think they caught him stealing some of their magic apples and they killed him. Dosed him up and tossed him off the bridge. Pruitt said he had a lump on the side of his head and the back of his head was smashed in where he landed. I’m wondering if the pathologist can check the blood in the contusion on the side of his head, see if it has the same level of opioids as the rest of him.”
Sorenson frowned. “Why?”
“Cause of death was the fall, but the theory was that he fell because of the drugs. If the contusion is clean, that means somebody thumped him, then dosed him and tossed him off the bridge.”
Sorenson nodded to the other agent, Durand, and he slipped outside. Then Sorenson turned back to me. “One more time.”
When I finished that time, Sorenson disappeared again. Twenty minutes later, he returned with a plate of meatloaf and mashed potatoes from Branson’s. Moose was right; the meatloaf was good.
As I ate, Sorenson shared some information, on the condition that I not tell anyone else. They had found some of Rupp’s notes and were still going through them, probably would be for years, but parts of the story had begun to emerge. I’d already figured a lot of it out, but I was impressed with how quickly Sorenson was able to fill in so many of the holes.
Rupp grew up just outside Dunston as Jason Gimble. Poor, fat, and socially awkward but very smart, he was a bully’s dream classmate, and one of those bullies, coincidentally, was Dwight Cooney. Gimble took his grandfather’s name, Rupp, when he left town. After his spectacular success and failure in academia, he tried legitimate business. He thought he had struck it rich when he created Mycozene, but the FDA r
efused to approve his wonder drug for wide use, saying the minor risk of elevated liver enzyme levels were not justified by the innocuous diseases it cured. Having failed to make his fortune legitimately, Rupp tried a different approach. The opioid-producing apples were his first attempt at making an illegal fortune. It was an impressive scientific accomplishment, but not the world-changing moneymaker he hoped it would be.
According to Rupp’s notes, the apples were potent, but the trees lacked vigor and required a lot of care. He couldn’t just license them, either, because the people who would be interested in licensing them would also be interested in killing him and taking them. That meant he had to be involved in production, and that meant he had to deal with people like Levkov, who started out as his drug middleman but quickly took over the operation.
Rupp probably could have made millions with those apples. But he didn’t want millions, he wanted billions.
Mycozene was a breakthrough cure for fungal diseases; what Rupp needed was a fungal disease that was bad enough, deadly enough, and common enough that the drug’s health risks would be overlooked. Mycozene was one hundred-percent effective against common bread mold, which could become a deadly infection in immuno-compromised patients. So Rupp altered the mold, creating a designer rhizomycosis. Instead of affecting a handful of immuno-compromised Americans every year, it would infect millions.
